In the history of America’s birth, the names of James Madison, Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton, Honorable William Findley, along with other founding fathers, are shining stars. Nonetheless, few Americans today would recognize the extraordinary influence on those “fathers” by such men as Adam Smith, Thomas Reid (one of the founders of Common Sense Philosophy), David Hume, and other philosophers of the Scottish Enlightenment. Along this pillars of Enlightenment thought, another Scotsman closely influenced American education, religion and politics in the Revolutionary era: Reverend John Witherspoon, the forgotten founding father, as Jeffry Morrison succinctly states in John Witherspoon and the Founding of the American Republic (University of Notre Dame Press, 2007).The Enlightenment was crucial in the development of almost every aspect of colonial, revolutionary and republican America. During and after the American Revolution, many of the core ideas of the Enlightenment were the basis for the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of the Confederation and the Federal Constitution, the founding documents of the United States. In Scottish (as well as French) Enlightenment, America’s framers found the philosophical principles and authority for new ways of thinking about governmental structure, economic development, the relationship with religion, the promotion of reason, freedom from oppression, and natural rights. Therefore, one of the fundamental historical and cultural debts that the United States has as a nation, is to the extraordinary Scottish thinkers of the Enlightenment and the scots immigrants who were educated and molded under those ideas. Witherspoon was one of those figures.
Scottish Enlightenment The three major areas of concern for Scottish philosophers were moral philosophy, history and economics. In moral philosophy, the main question was whether the acquisitive ethics of capitalism could be made compatible with traditional virtues of sociability, sympathy and justice. Reflecting on History, a bit more than a century before Auguste Comte (the father of Sociology), the Scots had a tendency to come with the notion of the “natural progress” of civilization. For instance, Adam Smith -before Karl Marx- envisaged history as progressing through economic stages, attended by political and social structures.
Francois Marie Arouet de Voltaire
On political economy, Hume identified commerce as the main engine of economic growth, with jealousy of trade and the misuse of money and credit as its main obstacles. Ferguson’s (1767) division of labor added another dimension. The intellectual efforts of the Scottish scholars, led Voltaire -one of the most celebrated thinkers of the Enlightenment (and who coined the concept of Enlightenment)- to note that “we look to Scotland for all our ideas of civilization” (‘Nous nous tournons vers l’Écosse pour trouver toutes nos idées sur la civilisation’).
David Hume
The reason for the Scottish Enlightenment, however, is a debate for another time. The importance and historical significance of the episode is for today. Walking down the Royal Mile in Edinburgh you will come across a statue of the Scottish philosopher David Hume, arguably the greatest philosopher of his time, if not all time.
Although originally hailing from Ninewells, Berwickshire, he spent the majority of his time in Edinburgh. He considered such subjects as morality, conscience, suicide and religion. Hume was a skeptic and although he always avoided declaring himself an atheist, he had little time for miracles or the supernatural and instead focused on the potential of humanity and the inherent morality of the human race.
This did not go down particularly well at the time as the majority of Scotland, and indeed the rest of Great Britain and Europe were very religious. Hume was a gentle individual; he allegedly died peacefully in his bed still having not given an answer on his faith, and did so without upsetting the bowl of milk in his lap. The legacy of his discourse lives on however and he is credited with some of the finest thinking of his time.
Sir Tom Devine
The Scottish Enlightenment was centered on the Universities of Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen. According to Tom Devine, “Scholars, born and educated in Scotland, sought to understand the natural world and the human mind. They wanted to improve the world through new ideas, discoveries and inventions.” He is the Scotland’s preeminent historian, whose presentation of Scottish history captured the public’s imagination through several bestselling books. The teaching career of Professor Sir Tom Devine spanned 45 years at the universities of Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen. Although now retired from university life, he continues to produce new books shedding light on Scotland’s past.
The Highlands of Scotland proved to be a natural recruiting ground for emigrants that were to help build North America during the 18th and 19th centuries.
Many Highlanders left Scotland in the 18th century.
The breakdown of Highland society and culture created bleak prospects on home soil for ordinary folk while the revered fighting powers of the clans made their men sought after recruits for the British Army fighting the American Revolution.
From Georgia to North Carolina and New York, here we look at those from the North of Scotland who were tempted across the Atlantic – whether through desperate need or the dream of a better life.
Highland life was tough and many sought a better life in the new world. Picture: Creative Commons
THE FIRST ARRIVALS
Wanted: Industrious, laborious and brave Gaelic speaking Highlanders to populate the newly established colony of Georgia.
It was 1735 with two Scots, Lieutenant Hugh Mackay and Captain George Dunbar, issuing the rallying call after being hired by Georgia’s trustees to find men suitable to defend frontiers against Spain and France and to make their 20-acre lands productive.
The Highlands, whose men had been both feared and lauded for their strength and fighting power, was a natural hunting ground for the soldiers.
Lanark and District Pipe Band lead New York’s Tartan Day Parade.
The Provost of Inverness, John Hossack – also a merchant and trader – was to help fund the boats to transport the men with Mackay launching a successful recruitment campaign in his home patch of Caithness and Sutherland. Dunbar successfully recruited from Clan Chattan.
Professor Marjory Harper, author and historian, said 260 men sailed to North America in three contingents between 1735 and 1741 with the first lot setting up the township of Darien on the reconstruct the clan system on the other side of the Atlantic r – named possibly in defiance of the failed Panama scheme.
Professor Harper said; “The Highlanders did pretty well there and the trustees were pleased with what they did. A second contingent went in 1737 and a third in 1741.
“This all helped to publicise opportunity in this magical new land across the Atlantic.”
CAPE FEAR – OR THE ARGYLL COLONY
They boarded a ship in Argyllshire, 350 Highland Scots bound for Brunswick Town, North Carolina. They came by choice, looking for land to stake their claim in the new World. Over the next century came thousands more, defeated at Culloden, punished by the English Government and “cleared” off their lands ” by their chiefs. Most spoke no English, they dressed in the manner of the Gaels, and were not welcomed by the English on the coast. They went forth up the river and made new lives along the Cape Fear.
Cape Fear in North Carolina become home to around 1,200 Jacobite prisoners following the 1715 and 1745 uprisings. The fighters were the bedrock of this new community later to be known as the Argyll Colony, which attracted an estimated 20,000 Scots in the eight years before the American Revolution.
Around 350 Scots arrived in 1739 on board The Thistle and, according to the Journal of the North Carolina Scottish Heritage Society, a second and larger wave of migration began to flood the Cape Fear valley with people from Arran, Jura, Islay and Gigha.
The Highlanders did not mix easily with the other groups in the area such as the English, Irish, Scots-Irish, Germans, or the smaller groups of Huguenots, Welsh, and Swiss. They preferred to live among those who spoke their language and shared their customs, and usually settled in groups.
Professor Harper said: “At the time, Argyllshire was at the vanguard of commercialization of estates. People were feeling dislocated at home, rents were going up, they were being treated in a far more hard nosed way by estate owners. That paternalism had gone.”
Flora MacDonald
Perhaps the most famous Scot to settle in North Carolina was Flora MacDonald, the woman who aided Bonnie Prince Charlie in his departure from Scotland. MacDonald and her husband Allan arrived in 1774 having lost 300 head of cattle in the three years before their departure. Her husband would go on to fight for the British Army in the American Revolution.
A BLURRED LINE
Professor Harper said there was often an “ambiguity” between military and civilian recruitment of Highlanders at a time when the British Government sought loyalists to fight the Revolution. Tacksmen, the lynch pins of the old clan systems and chief organizers of men for war, became key figures in the British Army in mid-18th Century as the military role of the clans was banished by the British Government following Culloden.
Harper said: “Many of them responded to the loss of status by entering the British Army as officers. “This was one of the ironies or the repercussions of Jacobitism. From the mid 18th Century, the feared warlike Highland clans became a major pillar in support for the British Army. “Many of them were placed to lead imperial units and part of their reward for military service was grants of land. The Tacksmen were well placed to get their tenants from back home.
“Military officers returned home to recruit settlers for their land grants, leading to the creation of concentrated clusters of Highland landownership for strategic parts of Great British North America.
“They could basically reconstruct the clan system on the other side of the Atlantic.”
The British Government was therefore seen as an agent of Highland emigration but later became concerned that the new Highland recruits would switch allegiances on arrival in North America.
Greater scrutiny of those leaving Scottish shores was therefore required.
THE REGISTER
A nationwide effort to survey every emigrant who officially left Scotland and England for North America between December 1773 and March 1776 was undertaken.
Harper said that government disquiet at emigration was at its peak in Scotland, with tradesmen threatening to leave if they did not get higher wages and claims that people willingly committed crimes in the hope of transportation.
The Register of Emigrants shows that 3,872 people left Scotland in the period with clusters from Perth, Inverness followed by Ross and Cromarty, Arygll and Renfrew.
Threshing and pig feeding from a book of hours from the Workshop of the Master of James IV of Scotland (Flemish, c. 1541)
Most of the Highlanders were agriculturalists, Harper, chair of history at Aberdeen University, said.
She added: “The Register contains almost twice as many negative as positive statements among the Scots, particularly among emigrants from the Highlands and Islands and the western lowlands.”
However, two out of five Scottish emigrants whose motives were recorded spoke positively about their decision to leave – particularly if they came from higher up the social scale,
Scots settled mainly in North Carolina and New York, according to the Register. Around nine percent of those who went to New York were listed as indentured servants, with the rate falling to one per cent for those heading to North Carolina, where linking up families was the main reason for going. The Register – analyzed by historian Viola Cameron – also shows 106 passengers travelled from Stornoway to Philadelphia in May 1774 all of whom emigrated “in order to procure a living abroad, as they were quite destitute of bread at home.”
A group from Strathspey reported being driven out by “high rents and deerness (sic) of provisions.” Another set from Argyllshire told researchers “they would never have thought of leaving their native country, could they have supplied their families in it. “But such of them as were farmers were obliged to quit their lands either on account of the advanced rent or to make room for shepherds.” The British Government was so alarmed that it banned emigration to North America for the duration of the American Revolution, which ended 1783.
After the ban was lifted, US remained a key destination for emigrants until 1909.
Amongst those arriving were those forced out by the Highlands Clearance. While the majority of exiles ended up in Canada, some found the Carolinas to be their final destination.
Many Highland drovers immigrated and became cattlemen and helped establish the great cattle trails of the western United States and Australia.
A regular traffic of men from Sutherland to work the ranches of Montana was also recorded in the late 1890s with some evidence that the workforce was around 50 per cent Gaelic speaking Scots and 50 per cent native Americans. Their impact of the Scots on language and music has been researched by Rob Gibson in his book Highland Cowboys, from the Hills of Scotland to the American Wild West.
LEGACY
Of the fifty-six Signers of the Declaration of Independence, 19 can claim to have Scottish ancestry. Meanwhile, only 10 of the 42 presidents of the United States can claim to have no Scottish heritage at all. Future steel industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie arrived in New York from Dunfermline in 1848, aged 13. John Muir, the father of the US national parks movement, arrived from Dunbar the following year. However, Harper cautioned against Scottish “exceptionalism” and said that Scots were part of a “melting pot” of new arrivals. She said: “Scots certainly had a big influence but they are part of a bigger jigsaw of lots of nations.”
John Trumbull: Declaration of IndependenceDeclaration of Independence, oil on canvas by John Trumbull, 1818; in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda, Washington, D.C. Architect of the Capitol
From 1909, it was Canada that was overwhelmingly favored by Scots seeking out new life across the Atlantic. In the 1920s, the peak of Scottish emigration, more than 363,000 Scots left for the USA and Canada in a single decade.
Most Ulster Scots were in Scotland before they migrated to Ireland. MOST but not ALL.. We’ll discuss where else they might have been later. But for now, where were they in Scotland and when did they move to Ireland and why?
Most of them were in areas of Scotland adjacent to Ireland. The largest migration of Scots to Ireland was in the early 1600’s. Due to lack of definitive records, we do not have exact numbers, but in the early 1600’s 120,000 are believed to have migrated — from both England and Scotland. Bailyn says in one 24 month period in the 1630’s at least 10,000 Scots migrated to Ireland (Bailyn, Bernard. The Peopling of British North America: An Introduction, Vintage Books, 1988, p 26).
In the early 1600’s Ireland was the primary destination for migrating Scots because it provided opportunities that Scotland couldn’t offer– and Scots were not welcome in English colonies. Protestants were welcome. Catholic Scots, of which there are many, were not welcomed by the government in Ireland, though some did come, largely at the behest of Scottish Catholic lords, on whose lands in Scotland they may have already been living. But the bulk were Presbyterian lowlanders.
They include a group of Protestant lowlanders that the Scottish government settled in Kintyre. They were run off by hostile natives and sheltered by Sir Randal McDonald (Catholic) on his lands in Antrim. He appreciated the lowland farmer. This group were a few of the many victims of the McDonald/Campbell feud.
Many tenant farmers came from Ayrshire — though Ireland attracted enterprising landlords and merchants from all over Scotland. Other Scots had come from Argyle and other McDonald homelands in the mid 1500’s with the McDonalds. Many of them were Catholic. They are still settled in the Glens of Antrim. Many are ethnically Irish because they are Catholic.
Another source of Scottish and English settlers was the Scottish/English border. At the time, James I/VI was breaking up those clans to secure the border between the two countries. Many fled hanging in England or Scotland to Ireland, largely settling in Fermanagh.
Often lords acquiring lands in Ireland recruited from their own Scottish estates or the estates of their neighbors, relatives, and friends.
An unknown number of Scots fled back to Scotland in the 1630’s to avoid religious persecution in Scotland.
Ulster
In the early 1600’s the Scots joined a small Irish population. Since poor Ulster had been decimated by more than 50 years of war at the time of the Plantations there were not many Irish. AND, contrary to popular belief, they were not “run off”. If you doubt me, read Elliott The Catholics of Ulster –or any number of history books. True, the government WANTED to run them off and pursue a “Cherokee” type solution. However they were very short of men to farm and bring in the harvests. They could not afford to displace the Irish as their lives depended on them staying to bring in the harvests.Though the law prohibited the newcomers from renting to Irish, many did anyway. The Church (Protestant) was under no such restraints so many of its tenants were Irish.
The Ulster Irish spoke of course Irish, which was simply a different dialect of Gaelic. Scots and Irish could communicate without difficulty. This isn’t surprising since the Scotti, an Irish tribe, moved from Ireland originally. They also followed similar naming patterns to the Irish. There were sons of Hughs, Johns, and James everywhere. So they sometimes ended up with the same or similar surnames as the incoming Scots.
Due to the destruction caused by war, there were no habitable houses. All the churches were in ruin. There were very few priests or Protestant clergy. It is documented that in at least one Antrim parish the entire Irish population became Presbyterian because the only minister about was the Scottish Presbyterian minister. If you wanted the baby baptized, he did it. In a world where religion was not yet politicized, this happened without communal pressure — in some locations.
A drawing from engraver Wenceslause Hollar in “The Tearers of Ireland” (The Terrors of Ireland), a 1642 book by James Cranford that purported to show the violence of the native Gaelic and Old English forces in Ireland during the Rebellion of 1641. The caption reads “Multitudes of Herringes driven into Dublin 20 a peny.” (National Library of Ireland)
In 1641 many Ulster Scots were killed by the Irish in the Rising, but we are not sure how many. We do not know how many people were in Ulster as many had fled to Scotland in the 1630’s to avoid the Black Oath. In 1642 more Scots arrived to defend the survivors as part of Monroe’s army. It founded the first Presbyterian presbytery in Ireland. Before that, there was none. Though Presbyterian, not all these men were lowlanders. I have an ancestor who presumably arrived in 1642 in Monroe’s army. He came from Kintyre and was a Lamont, though the surname of his descendants is BLACK. They settled into Antrim.
In the 1680’s more Scots came to Ireland, fleeing the Killing Times in south western Scotland.
In the late 1690’s another period of enhanced Scots immigration to Ireland occurred after King William secured his throne. Apparently whole new towns and villages sprang up at this time. There is also evidence of a famine in Scotland which caused increased migration.
After the Williamite Settlement there were no large movements of Scots to Ireland because economic conditions in Ireland were not good. Sometimes they fled to Ireland to avoid religious persecution, though sometimes they fled back to Scotland to escape it in Ireland. People also moved in both directions at various times to avoid political problems. People also migrated seasonally to Scotland to work on farms.
Non-Scots “Ulster Scots”
However not all “Ulster Scots” were from Scotland. Assimilating into this ethnic group, which has become synonymous for Presbyterians in Northern Ireland, were the English settlers of the Ulster Plantations. The English did not survive well in the tough climate of Ulster in the early 1600’s. The Scots tended to replace them even in the English Plantations.
Far right: 16th century escutcheon showing the quartered arms of Sir John Chichester (quarterly of 4: Chichester, Raleigh, Beaumont quartering Willington, Wise), impaling Courtenay quartering Redvers. Chimney-piece in Simonsbath House,[15] having been moved there in the early 20th century by the Fortescue family from their seat at Weare Giffard Hall.[16] Hugh Fortescue (1544–1600) of Weare Giffard married Elizabeth Chichester (died 1630), a daughter of Sir John Chichester by his wife Gertrude Courtenay
Other English/Welsh blood was donated by the Chichesters, who started a colony of their tenants in Antrim from their lands in Devon and Wales in the later 1500’s. This is called the “Lost English Colony”. The surnames remain in the Belfast area. During the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, Sir John Chichester of Raleigh, Devon, was appointed as governor of Carrickfergus at a time when the English were seeking to extend their influence in Ulster away from sea-supported colonies. This provoked a general uprising by the native Irish under Hugh O’Neill in the period between 1595 and 1603. Chichester was captured in a battle with Randall MacSorley MacDonnell in 1597 and beheaded.
Also you have other immigrants such as the Thompson family, who emigrated from Holland. They became a prominent Belfast merchant family. After 1690 many of King William’s continental soldiers settled in Ireland. Not too many of Cromwell’s soldiers were settled in Ulster since it already was largely in the hands of loyal Protestants.
Protestants such as Huguenots and Germans also settled in Ireland in the 1600’s. Many of these settled elsewhere in Ireland than Ulster, though there were settlements of Germans in Antrim and Huguenots in Lisburn — as well as others.
The surnames of the non-British settlers rapidly became anglicized so that they can be difficult to identify by surname alone.
Finally Irish assimilated into the Ulster Scots ethnic group. As Irish converted to Protestantism, descendants assumed their families came from Scotland as they adopted the myths of the Ulster Scot as their own. However some don’t. Surnames were fluid. Adopting a new ethnic identity was very simple: drop the O. Some Irish surnames began with Mac as well as Scots. By dropping the Mac, the name was anglicized and indistinguishable from English surnames.
In the 1600’s there appears to have been an ethnic fluidity in Ireland. Your “ethnicity” was determined more by your choice of religion rather than your ancestrage. In some areas in south Antrim, it is believed that, due to lack of both Catholic and Church of Ireland clergy and the presence of Gaelic-speaking Presbyterian clergy, the indigenous population became Presbyterian by default. The first Presbyterian minister in Bushmills was an Irishman named O’Quinn in the early 1600’s. He preached in Irish to his congregation and went on missions to convert the Irish. Evidence remains that the Scottish Presbyterians maintained an active ministry in Irish though this became impossible to maintain due to the government policies outlawing the use of Irish. Meanwhile Scottish men were marrying Irish women — who raised their offspring Catholic and Irish speaking. In fact, when the law was repealed in the early 1600’s which made it illegal for Scots to marry Irish, we are told there was “great rejoicing”.
Let none of this of course detract from your current ethnic tag. We are who were are; our ancestors, however, may well have been something different. At one time they were Strathclydians, Mercians, Northumberlanders or Irish or Scots warriors fighting with Irish or Scots warriers of differing clans. These kingdoms and the clan rivalries are forgotten though at one time their inhabitants fought bitterly with one another to establish their cultures in Great Britain. In fact, the Scotti of Roman days were an Irish clan — from County Antrim. They later invaded Scotland (500 AD) and won the local cultural battle with the Picts.
As long as Ireland and Scotland have been next to each other, there’s been migration between the two to adjacent areas. Ulster is adjacent to Scotland — so that’s where many Scots went. It was easy to go over and come back again.
Often it was difficult to tell a Scot from an Irish because in many cases, they shared a common culture and spoke a common tongue. They had similar cultures. Many Scots clans are founded by Irish clans. In fact, Scotland is a colony of Ireland. Before 500 AD the “Scotti” were in Ireland. Scotland was called “Alba” then and Picts lived there. The Scotti established a colony on the western shores. Eventually these Antrim boys lost their lands in Ireland to marauding Irish clans, but they supplanted the Picts. Kenneth McAlpin united the thrones of the Picts and Scots. However the eastern lowlanders were a different people. They are the descendants of Angles and Vikings and Pictish clans, not the Irish Scotti.
In the late Middle Ages a new phenomena began to occur that would have a massive impact on Ireland. Irish lords began to hire Scottish mercenaries to help fight their intertribal and wars with the English. They were called Galloglass soldiers from the Irish gall oglaigh or stranger soldiers. They were apparently from the western Scotland and of mixed Scots and Viking origin. They changed the course of history in the 1500’s. Through one dynastic marriage an Irish lord got 10,000 of these soldiers. Some of them settled down in Ireland and established clans of their own. The McSweenies are one example of a galloglass clan who assimilated into the Irish. If they stayed Catholic, they assimilated into the Irish and lost their ethnic identity as Scots.
As mentioned, the majority of the Ulster Scots came in the Ulster Plantation period. They came willingly, recruited by their lairds, many of whom were also acquiring Irish estates. Their forte was not only farming but also the skilled labor required to create a colony. They could build homes, raise livestock, blacksmith, and so on.
Seventeen Hundreds
Much of the text on this page has focused on the sixteen hundreds since it was the formative period of the Ulster Scots. It was also a very turbulent hundred years in Ireland. Nonetheless, Scots didn’t attempt to emigrate to the Americas in any large numbers. A few did leave. In fact Rev Mckemie began the Presbyterian Church in America. However most didn’t leave till the 1700’s.
In the early 1700’s the political situation in Ireland stabilized. There would be no more rebellions till 1798. However economic conditions worsened, at least partially due to trade restrictions placed on the economy by Parliament.These laws also impacted the Scottish economy. Consequently Ireland was no longer an attractive destination for immigrants.
While in the 1600’s the Presbyterians were persecuted and neither they or Catholics worshipped in churches, as the Penal Laws were reduced in the 1700’s, they began to construct churches, called meeting houses. While in the 1600’s it was common for families to move to new farms frequently, in the 1700’s people “settled down” and attempted to hold onto the lease that they’d had. Thrown into competition over reduced resources, Irish and Scots began to conflict locally. For instance the Hearts of Oak disturbance.
The great wave of emigration of Ulster Scots to American began in 1718 and continued till the start of the American Revolution.
Scots-Irish, were the dominate ethnic group in the Appalachian South. Their fierce pride, clan structure, and distrust of outsiders became our own, but before they defined our region, they were restless immigrants who, for several centuries, seemed as destined to migrate as they were to breathe.
The Scots-Irish were a group of Scots who moved to Ulster, in Northern Ireland, before moving to the U.S. and first settling in New Hampshire and parts of Maine. Within a generation, they had moved down along the Appalachian spine, from western Pennsylvania and southeastern Ohio down into West Virginia, western Virginia, North Carolina, northern Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama and large parts of South Carolina, Kentucky and Tennessee. Many moved further south and west, down to the Gulf Coast and out to Oklahoma, Arkansas, East Texas and beyond. Eventually they migrated out to the Bakersfield region of California (think The Grapes of Wrath), and up the Great Plains to parts of Michigan, Kansas, Nebraska and Colorado (James Dobson and Tom Tancredo territory, not Denver and Boulder).
Their story starts in the Scottish lowlands, where they battled the English over sovereignty and one another over food, horses, property, and clan grievances. Their world was full of strife–recurring wars, poverty and soil so thin that it could hardly be farmed. They responded with blunt persistence, fighting whatever came at them and, at times, marauding to survive.
When Ulster Plantation, a new colony in the north of Ireland, was opened they went in droves. It held the promise of land; Ulster was a sparsely populated region. It was also familiar terrain; in smaller numbers, Scots had been migrating there for centuries.
For a while, Ulster worked. Because the region had few native Irish, it was easy for differences like religion to be overlooked. The settling Scots expanded their numbers, extending their strength, but in what was probably inevitable, massive conflicts arose between the English, the Scottish, and the Irish. Ulster’s residents were put dead center in a three kingdom war.
By the 1700s, many Scots-Irish had their fill. As much as one-third of Ireland’s Protestant population resumed their Westward migration, this time across the Atlantic to the edge of the American colonies, the undeveloped back country of the Appalachian range.
Even here, they found conflict. This time, it was with the aristocracy that controlled America’s lowlands. They admitted the Scots-Irish so long as the fiery newcomers stayed in the mountains. The Anglican elite found them rowdy and unruly but potentially useful at expanding the colonies’ Western reach. They sent them into the ancient forests of Appalachia, where the Scots-Irish would have to do what they did best–fight.
Scots-Irish response:
“Their answer, then as now, was to tell the English Establishment to go straight to hell. A deal was a deal–they would fight the Indians, although many of them would also trade with them and even intermarry…America was a far larger place than Ireland, a land in which they could live as they wished and move as freely as they dared whether or not the established government liked what they were doing…so they made their own world in the mountains.”
We know that world well. While there are nearly three hundred years between those first mountain settlers and us, we still see their influence. It appears in our language, our customs, but most conspicuously in our interactions with the world around us. I would say that we remain a clannish people, fiercely loyal to family, unimpressed with material wealth, quick tempered, suspect of the elite, strong fighters and religiously fervent.
Yes the first names are great as they help distinguish the individual in records and make identification easier–usually. One should not assume that there are no contemporaries with the exact same unusual name as often names of this type are passed down from one generation to the other and I’m sure every family has one or two. Or the same names that have been passed down generation after generation so to keep the spirit of that ancestor alive, not to mention the honor we all share and feel if given that ‘special’ name.
Then you have those first names that are so unusual you stop and think to yourself ‘Why would they name this child that?’ Well here’s a clue for you it may actually reference a maiden name of ancestors, surnames of ancestral associates, surnames of political or pop figures revered by the family, references to geographic locations, etc.
Unusual first names also get butchered by record clerks, census takers, and other officials. Genealogists should always be considerate of alternate spellings and remember that any name that falls within the reasonable realm of “sounds like the name I want” could actually be a reference to the name that you want.
‘Carruthers’ gets written as ‘Carothers’ and other references without one of the “r” or an ‘I’ replaces the ‘r’ all together. Those references are actually good clues as to how the name was likely pronounced.
The blog listed below is a quick and easy study on how to find that same name ancestor….
“Canonbie Churchyard, on the north or left bank of the Esk, is one of the largest parish burying grounds in Scotland, and is kept in such good order as to be an example to many others. A few years ago my worthy friend the present minister wisely made arrangements for gathering together the fallen gravestones. A large number then lay about in all directions, many of them of great age. They were collected and placed side by side against the western wall, where they now rest, one hundred and forty-nine in number, and others which lay prone were raised to the perpendicular in their original positions.
”These ancient gravestones, even at the present time, are looked upon by some as objects of mere commercial utility. Not so long ago, a horse and cart being observed in this graveyard at an early hour, inquiry was made of the man in charge as to his object in being there. A woman who accompanied him offered the explanation that the front door-step of her cottage having been worn down, to remedy the defect she had come to take away her grannies tombstone; which intention was duly carried into effect.
”The Parish Church is surrounded by a large wall, surrounded by flat cope-stones, some of which had been displaced by cattle in the adjacent field. It was found on examination that, smooth on the upper side, some bore inscriptions on their under faces. Possibly the entire coping of the wall which encircles the church and measures 200 yards or more in length, is composed of old gravestones.”
CANOBIE, or CANONBIE, a parish, in the county of Dumfries, 6 miles (N.) from Longtown. An ancient priory here is supposed to have given the name to this place, Canobie being probably derived from the Saxon Bie, or By, signifying “a station,” and thus interpreting the word “the residence of the canons.” The church is an elegant sandstone building with a tower, erected in 1822 and contains sittings for upwards of 1000 persons.
Canonbie Free Church
History— This congregation was formed at the Disruption, but the Duke of Beccleuch, sole proprietor of the parish, at first absolutely refused a site for a place of worship. From 1843 until 1844 the congregation met for worship on the public highway. The charge was sanctioned in December 1843. The Duke finally relented, and the church was completed in 1851. Great influence was exercised to prevent the inhabitants of the parish from associating themselves with the Free Church, but in spite of this the cause enjoyed much popular goodwill. Membership declined with the decrease in population. Membership: 1848, 240; 1900, 171. Source:Annals of the Free Church of Scotland, 1843–1900, ed. Rev. William Ewing, D.D., 2 vols. pub. 1914. Film #918572. More details are given in the source.)
As the war went on and they faced the British at Cowpens, Kings Mountain and a generation later in New Orleans, these mountain men with their precision rifles gave fearful account of their fighting prowess. They made up a good part of the Pennsylvania Line on whom Washington could rely more than on any other regiments in the Continental Army. For Americans whose roots are deep in Appalachian soil, having “Scotch-Irish” (more correctly, Scots-Irish) heritage is a given. Many of us were raised on stories of ancestors migrating into the mountains of Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama from Tidewater Virginia and Pennsylvania, seeking space to breathe and land of their own. It has been said that they chose the mountains because the lush green peaks and hollows of the Blue Ridge and Great Smokes reminded them of home.
The Great Smoky Mountains.
Whether it was a former home in Ireland or in Scotland was never made completely clear for understanding our heritage can get rather confusing. Are we transplanted Highlanders, Lowlanders, or plain Irish with a funny name?
For anyone claiming Scots-Irish ancestry, the answer is often found originally in Lowlands Scotland with the Irish bit added somewhere after 1610. To know how this came to be, one must look much farther back to the time of the Norman Conquest. A little over 100 years after firmly planting themselves in England, Henry II (1139-1189) and his Norman noblemen turned their gaze westward.
As a side note this writer has deep roots in the Scots-Irish community dating as far back as the late 1600’s when two families came together as one and I becoming a Scots-Irish. Now you will understand that I am laying the ground work leading up to my own story or should I say my honorable family history so shall we continue on…..
Effigies of Henry II of England (r. 1154 – 1189 CE) and his wife Eleanor of Aquitane (r. 1137 – 1204 CE) from their tombs in Fontevraud Abbey, France where they were buried.
In 1171, Henry’s Norman knights invaded Ireland for the first time, beginning a 500 year struggle to dominant the Irish whom they deemed an inferior race. Over the centuries, it became customary for English kings to reward Anglo-Norman families with conquered Irish lands in the hope they would help subdue the native Irish. Most of these plans failed. Through intermarriage and other associations, many of the Anglo-Normans became as Irish as the natives. They turned on their benefactors and joined in the Irish struggle to resist English domination. By the reign of Elizabeth I (ruled 1558-1603), trying to keep the Irish in check had become a serious drain on the royal exchequer.
Elizabeth I Armanda Portrait, 1588
Tired of her countrymen becoming Irish to the core, Elizabeth fell upon a new scheme for ensuring her transplanted subjects remained British in heart, mind, and soul. Instead of a few noblemen who would soon turn into Anglo-Irishmen and join the resistance, she would send hundreds of her subjects to form a colony. The plan involved awarding lands to English noblemen who could guarantee bringing enough Englishmen with them to form a “planation.”
English colonies in 17th-century North America English colonies in 17th-century North America. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
The plan involved awarding lands to English noblemen who could guarantee bringing enough Englishmen with them to form a “planation.” The native Irish would be driven from their lands and the English would move in. Elizabeth’s colonization attempts failed due to the English being outnumbered by the usurped Irish, who unsurprisingly, raided, burned property, and generally harassed these unwelcome interlopers. In addition, the number of English induced to migrate was not sufficient to provide a strong military presence while trying to make a go of their farms. In the 17th century the principal component of the population in the colonies was of English origin, and the second largest group was of African heritage. German and Scotch-Irish immigrants arrived in large numbers during the 18th century. Other important contributions to the colonial ethnic mix were made by the Netherlands, Scotland, and France. New England was almost entirely English, in the southern colonies the English were the most numerous of the settlers of European origin, and in the middle colonies the population was much mixed, but even Pennsylvania had more English than German settlers.
James I of England & VI of Scotland
With James I of England (James VI of Scotland), the English plantation scheme was revised once more. In 1603, as Elizabeth lay on her deathbed, the English under the leadership of Lord Mountjoy instituted an Irish policy so harsh that the Ulster region was all but depopulated through starvation. The door was now open for a permanent English presence in Ireland. Emptying the Ulster region of its native Irish coupled with the burgeoning private enterprise of English lords and Scottish lairds sealed its fate leading to the Irish coming to the U. S. Colonies.
Scots-Irish Colonies
In large part the Ulsterites came to Pennsylvania. They had an inherent aversion to large centers of population, and so found homes to the west of the Susquehanna. This was Indian frontier and full of dangers. Accustomed as they soon became to stealthy sharpshooting and bloody scalping, the implacable nature of the war the Scotch-Irish waged against the Red Man is understandable if not always excusable.
Initially, Scotsmen were not considered for participation in the plantation scheme, but in 1609, a letter to the Scottish Privy Council changed that. James’s English advisors recognized that those living in southwestern Scotland were a mere thirty miles across the sea from Ulster and had far greater inducements to emigrate than their countrymen to the south in England’s gentler climate.
Southwestern Scotland
In the years 1610 through 1697, a steady stream of Lowlands Scots, as many as 200,000, flowed into the Ulster region to the counties of Antrim, Down, Armagh, Tyrone, Donegal, Cavan, Fermanagh, and Derry. Unlike earlier transplants, they did not give up and go home nor did they become fully Irish. Staunch Presbyterians, they retained their Protestant faith and remained loyal British subjects. They stayed in Ireland until the call of the New World had many of them packing up for another chance at land and freedom.
The 1800’s would see a second wave of Scottish migration into Ireland because of the Highland Clearances. Whether of Highland or Lowland origin, these transplanted Scots poured into Pennsylvania and Tidewater Virginia before spreading inland to the mountains and beyond.
More than 100,000 Ulster Presbyterians of Scottish origin migrated to the American colonies in the six decades prior to the American Revolution, the largest movement of any group from the British Isles to British North America in the eighteenth century. Drawing on a vast store of archival materials, The People with No Name is the first book to tell this fascinating story in its full, transatlantic context. It explores how these people–whom one visitor to their Pennsylvania enclaves referred to as ”a spurious race of mortals known by the appellation Scotch-Irish”–drew upon both Old and New World experiences to adapt to staggering religious, economic, and cultural change. In remarkably crisp, lucid prose, Patrick Griffin uncovers the ways in which migrants from Ulster–and thousands like them–forged new identities and how they conceived the wider transatlantic community. The book moves from a vivid depiction of Ulster and its Presbyterian community in and after the Glorious Revolution to a brilliant account of religion and identity in early modern Ireland. Griffin then deftly weaves together religion and economics in the origins of the transatlantic migration, and examines how this traumatic and enlivening experience shaped patterns of settlement and adaptation in colonial America. In the American side of his story, he breaks new critical ground for our understanding of colonial identity formation and of the place of the frontier in a larger empire. The People with No Name will be indispensable reading for anyone interested in transatlantic history, American Colonial history, and the history of Irish and British migration.
Among the ethnic groups which have been largely neglected by historians are the Ulster Scots, or Scotch-Irish, as they came to be called in America. Indeed, few works besides James G. Leyburn’s 1962 classic study, The Scotch-Irish: A Social History, have explored in depth their unique identity and assessed their valuable contributions to the formation of British North America. Griffin’s book explores how the Scotch-Irish identity was created from an active involvement in trans-Atlantic commerce and by several waves of immigration to the New World between the years 1718 and 1775. These migrations are noteworthy in that more than 100,000 men and women journeyed from their native Irish province of Ulster to forge new lives in the American colonies, largely motivated by fluctuations in the linen trade, religious persecution represented by the imposition of the Test Act, and schisms within their own churches. In fact, the Scotch-Irish represent the single largest movement of any group from the British Isles to North America during the eighteenth century.
The proportion was roughly four Scots to one Englishman. They largely displaced what Macaulay referred to as the “aboriginal Irish,” who were almost wholly Catholic. The Scots were Presbyterians and the English Anglicans with some dissenting creeds.
King James I
In order to clarify this paradox in the “Scotch-Irish” terminology, we shall have to go back to the old Whitehall Palace in London, on a day in September 1607, only four months after the English had planted the first permanent colony in America. King James I was disturbed by reports of further turbulence in his unruly Irish dominion. He decided to act on a proposal by Sir Arthur Chichester, Lord Deputy of Ireland, to repeople the island with Protestants.
That was the beginning of the Ulster Plantation. What then formed nine counties of Northern Ireland (now six counties) was actually re-peopled in the 17th century with Protestants from Northern England and the Lowlands of Scotland. The proportion was roughly four Scots to one Englishman.
They largely displaced what Macaulay referred to as the “aboriginal Irish,” or the ‘Black Irish’, who were often given the description of people of Irish origin who had dark features, black hair, dark complexion and eyes. who were almost wholly Catholic. The Scots were Presbyterians and the English Anglicans with some dissenting creeds.
Thus we have the Scotch-Irish who later were to be such a large factor in settling the New World. They disliked the term because they held the native Irish in contempt as an inferior people. The Irish, on their part, were equally averse to being linked in any way with a people they hated as invaders. But language grows without consent and in spite of ordinance. And so a hyphenated term that was repulsive to both parties and misleading in context was woven into history.
The burning bush is a common symbol used by Presbyterian churches; here as used by the Presbyterian Church in Ireland.[1]Latin inscription underneath translates as “burning but flourishing”. In Presbyterianism, alternative versions of the motto are also used such as “burning, yet not consumed”.The incident has a rough parallel in the Democratic-Republican Party of Madison’s and Monroe’s time(USA). It is one of the ironies of British empire rule that having settled Ulster with people of the Protestant faith, it was not long until the British were persecuting the residents of the Plantation for holding to their dissenting Presbyterianism. By 1715 the Anglican church establishment had been so tightened that Presbyterians could not hold civil or military office, nor be married by their own ministers.
This banner depicts William of Orange arriving at Carrickfergus, in what is now Northern Ireland. He brought with him the largest invasion force Ireland has ever seen and used it to defeat James II at the Battle of the Boyne.
Even more galling to the Orangemen (as they came to be called after the Revolution of 1688 when William, Prince of Orange, became joint sovereign with his Queen Mary) were the trade restrictions imposed by the English as though on “foreigners.” The transplanted Scotch and English had made agriculture and stock-raising thrive on the rocky hills of Ulster. They had introduced flax growing and built a high-quality linen industry, and were engaging in superior woolen manufacture. Deprived of the right to export their goods even to the motherland or the other English colonies or to import from anywhere but England, their source of a livelihood was narrowed to bare subsistence.
The original 13 colonies of North America in 1776, at the United States Declaration of Independence. Culture Club/Getty Images
It was under these circumstances that there began early in the 18th century and continued until around 1775 the great exodus of the Scotch-Irish to America. Within about a half century, fully half of the Ulsterites had emigrated. At the time of the American Revolution they constituted no less than one-sixth of the whole population in the 13 colonies, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia.
They came over, says W. E. H. Lecky, “their hearts burning with indignation, and in the War of Independence they were almost to a man on the side of the insurgents.” It was these comparative newcomers to the colonies, or their near descendants, who contributed 12 of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence and 12 of the 54 delegates to the Constitutional Convention. The Mecklenburg Resolves voted by Scotch-Irish in North Carolina anticipated by more than a year the famous Declaration at Philadelphia which marked the birth of our nation.
One of the interesting footnotes to history records the proposal by Benjamin Franklin that in tribute to the Scotch-Irish zeal for the cause of independence, the Continental Congress should except Ireland from the non-importation agreement by the colonies. While this idea was found impracticable, the Congress did address a special apology to the people of Ireland for the necessity that forced them “to cease our commercial connexion with your island.” Shortly thereafter the British government yielded to Ireland what it had refused the American colonies—an end to the restrictions on commerce.
In the autumn of 1569 Thomas Percy, 7th Earl of Northumberland and Charles Neville, 6th Earl of Westmorland, rose in rebellion against the English queen, Elizabeth 1 and her government.
Thomas Percy
Ostensibly the rebellion, to which thousands of men from the north of England flocked in sympathy, was to smash the stranglehold that the Protestant religion, initiated by Elizabeth’s father, Henry VIII, held over the country of England.
The men of the north of England were true to the old religion, Roman Catholicism.
“Charles Neville, 6th Earl of Westmorland
One more reason existed for the revolt. Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, cousin to Elizabeth and with the blood of the House of Tudor, to which Elizabeth belonged, was held under house arrest in Tutbury in Staffordshire in the Midlands of England. She was a staunch adherent of the Catholic cause.
The rebellion sought to establish her right to the English throne.
Yet, whilst Neville and his wife might have aspired to these high ideals, in the case of Thomas Percy there was another agenda, underlying reasons why he wished to rebel against Elizabeth.
Thomas Percy, by the standards of noblemen of the time, was impoverished and felt that he had not been given a fair hand by the English government. Percy found the cost of maintaining his vast estates on Northumberland, Cumberland and North Yorkshire very taxing, yet he was reluctant to give them up.The English government had their eye on his possessions. To remove them from his possession would break the power he had over the northern people.
When copper was found on his estates in Newlands, near Keswick in the English Lake District, he thought that his pecuniary problems were over.
William Cecil
However, the English government, led by Elizabeth’s chief advisor, William Cecil who would become Lord Burghley, heard of the find, they sequestered the mines stating that the proceeds from them were government property. In a further move to wrest power from Percy and remove his patronage at Court, he was removed from the positions of Warden of the Middle and East March.
Thomas Percy, spurned and disregarded, was ripe for rebellion. He would join the cause for re-establishment of the old religion because he adhered to it, thought it right and proper. But there were other reasons.
The Rising of the North as it has come to be known failed miserably and by December 1569 the two earls had fled to Naworth Castle in Cumberland (now part of Cumbria). Its aims were in tatters and, in the aftermath, hundreds of men from the north of England who had joined the cause would die at the end of a noose-often unjustly, purely because they were associated with a town or village which had espoused the cause of the rebel lords.
PUDDINGBURN TOWER. ( SITE OF)
The two rebel lords with the countess of Northumberland and a small retinue, on the failure of the rebellion, fled to the arms of one of the instigators of the rebellion, Leonard Dacre of Naworth castle, near Brampton in Cumberland.
Dacre had initially been a volatile adherent of the insurrection whilst smarting at his disinheritance of the lands of Greystoke in Cumberland at the hands of the Howards, the most prominent and richest family in the England of the time.
He had proved in the misfortunes of the rebellion to be a turncoat and achieved forgiveness on interview with the sovereign, Elizabeth 1. (Later she was to call him ‘a cankered suttill traitor’) when, still smarting for revenge at the outcome of his bid for inheritance, he raised a small army against the English government but failed and fled after the Battle of the Hellbeck.
Dacre turned the rebel lords away from his door, would have no truck with them, so they headed for Liddesdale in the Scottish Borders. By reputation the Armstrongs, Elliots and Crosers of NALiddesdale had an open invite to anyone on the run from the law. They were extremely lawless themselves and took every opportunity to cock a snoop at both English and Scottish authority. They offered shelter and refuge to all, any man, irrespective of race, be he Scottish or English.
Anne, Countess of Northumberland, was housed with Jock of the Side in the high ground near the Kirk Hill of Newcastleton. Her abode with Jock was described as a hovel ‘not fit for a dog kennel in England’. An observation made by one of the Scottish Lords.
Her husband was taken in by Hector Armstrong of Harelaw between the delightful villages of today of Canonbie and Newcastleton, both in Liddesdale.
Ruins of Puddingburn Tower.
Charles Neville was granted sanctuary and refuge at Puddingburn Tower, the home of the ‘Laird’s Jock Armstrong.
Lady Anne Percy would be robbed of her jewelry and horses not by, it is said by some writers, Jock of the Side, but by the Black Ormiston, a fierce Border Reiver, who had previously been implicated in the murder of Henry, Lord Darnley, second husband of Mary, Queen of Scots.
James the Black Laird Ormiston (1522 – 1573)
Lady Anne would suffer great illness in the winter of 1570 but eventually be taken in by the Kerrs of Ferniehurst, themselves Border Reivers behind a facade of respectability which was common for the time. The Kerrs had been at feud with the Percys for years and it is admirable that they put this aside, second to the health and welfare of the Northumbrian countess.
FERNIEHURST CASTLE
Charles Neville, 6th Earl of Westmorland, would eventually escape abroad where he died, destitute, in 1601.
And what of Thomas Percy, 7th Earl of Northumberland?
Hector Armstrong of Harelaw would eventually ‘shop’ him, arrange through Martin Elliot of Braidley (Teviotdale I think, not Liddesdale) that he was led into an ambush and captured by the Scottish authorities. To take ‘Hector’s cloak’ is still a saying sometimes heard in the Scottish Borders, synonymous with betraying a friend.
Percy was eventually imprisoned in Lochleven castle in Fife, Scotland, where he wallowed for two years whilst negotiations between the Scots and English authorities took their natural tardy course replete with avarice and greed at Percy’s worth to both countries. Throughout this time Lady Anne who had escaped abroad petitioned for his release, endeavoured to raise the funds that could secure that. She succeeded in raising the demands of the Scots but it was to no avail.
On the pretext that Percy was to ride to London to make peace with the English sovereign, Elizabeth 1, he was escorted south.
Micklegate Bar
At an overnight stop in York, he was beheaded in a street known as the Pavement. His head was impaled on the Micklegate of York to be eventually removed a few years later. His headless body was buried in the church of Holy Cross in York, far from his homelands. The church stands no more; the whereabouts of his grave is now unknown.
Micklegate Bar was the most important of York’s four main medieval gateways and the focus for grand events. The name comes from ‘Micklelith’, meaning great street.
It was the main entrance to the city for anyone arriving from the South. At least half a dozen reigning monarchs have passed through this gate and by tradition they stop here to ask the Lord Mayor’s permission to enter the city.
The lower section of the bar dates from the 12th century, the top two storeys from the 14th. The building was inhabited from 1196. Like the other main gates, Micklegate Bar originally had a barbican built on the front, in this case demolished in 1826.
For centuries the severed heads of rebels and traitors were displayed above the gate, the many victims include Sir Henry Purcey (Hotspur) in 1403 and Richard, Duke of York in 1460. The last of the severed heads was removed in 1754.
References:
The Rising of the North by George Thornton. Published by Ergo Press, Hexham, Northumberland.
The Northern Rebellion of 1569 by K.J. Kesselring. Published by Palgrave Macmillan.
Less learned than the first two mentioned but with a definite place in this incident in Northern history there is a chapter in John Graham’s book ‘Condition of the Border at the Union’.
To the left is a little map of the Border Marches on each side of the English Scottish Border from the Solway Firth in the west to the North Sea in the east. This is the area that dominated the national history of England and Scotland from the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries.
These Marches were the haunt of the Border Reivers for centuries and I will talk about them later: when and how they were formed, how local authority endeavored to control them, the main characters in the reiving times, and how and why they were no longer needed after the Union of the Crowns of England and Scotland in 1603.
The houses of the Border Reivers, how they were built and why they were built in that way. In a land which was a hotbed of feud and violence for hundreds of years, it goes without saying that the Border Reivers would take defense of life and property with all due seriousness. A man slept easier knowing that he was well protected by the stone that surrounded him.
Yet for the majority of the folk on both sides of the Border, on both the English and Scottish side, stone was a commodity that was little used in the reiving times. Nor was heavy wood in the form of the traditional log cabin considered. Instead they made their homes from the flimsiest of materials available at a time when defense was a serious priority. Why?
It is as well to know that from the time of the Scottish Wars of Independence between the two countries, the lands on each side of the Border were often the stalking ground of armies, marching north or south for the relentless military confrontations. Both countries were bent on achieving dominance and the Border folk found themselves locked in the bitter wars of attrition for no other reason than they were there, a larder for an army on the move. No match for the hordes of armed men who penetrated their lands, they suffered every atrocity: loss of life, livelihood and home as armies foraged and stole in the surge forward to clash with the enemy.
The wars between England and Scotland endured, off and on, for nigh on three centuries and the commoners soon learned that it was futile to build a home of stone or wood. They were weeks in the making yet could be lost in minutes when fired by the next marauding army unit that appeared over the horizon.
Thus eventually the Borderers resorted to building out of wattle and daub, known as a ‘clay biggin’. It might be lost in minutes but it could be re-built within a day in the wake of the latest round of destruction.
Wattle and daub is a composite building method used for making walls and buildings, in which a woven lattice of wooden strips called wattle is daubed with a sticky material usually made of some combination of wet soil, clay, sand, animal dung and straw. Wattle and daub has been used for at least 6,000 years and is still an important construction method in many parts of the world. Many historic buildings include wattle and daub construction, and the technique is becoming popular again in more developed areas as a low-impact sustainable building technique.
The roofs were of similar construction in that the interlaced branches of trees were used but they were normally covered in turves and often weighed down with boulders suspended on ropes slung over the roof.
The walls of the house were build around the interwoven, interlaced thinner branches of trees to which mud or even dung mixed with leaves and small twigs was plastered. When dry and hard it provided an effective barrier to the harsh Border climate.
There were no windows and the door was usually fabricated from an animal hide. Around the outside of the building a trench would be dug and filled with small stone to aid drainage.
In a land which was a hotbed of feud and violence for hundreds of years, it goes without saying that the Border Reivers would take defence of life and property with all due seriousness. A man slept easier knowing that he was well protected by the stone that surrounded him.
Inside the floor was tamped down soil covered in rushes; the walls plastered by the same method used on the outside of the building. The fire was in the middle of the floor; smoke emitted, if lucky, through a small hole in the roof.
Thus the common Border folk resorted to the building methods of their ancestors from a previous millenium, a move which succinctly epitomises the condition of the Border country. In other areas of England and Scotland men were beginning to build in stone more often and in a more decorative manner than at any time in their history, such was their confidence in a more settled age. Yet for the majority of the folk on both sides of the Border, on both the English and Scottish side, stone was a commodity that was little used in the reiving times. Nor was heavy wood in the form of the traditional log cabin considered. Instead they made their homes from the flimsiest of materials available at a time when defence was a serious priority. Why?
It is as well to know that from the time of the Scottish Wars of Independence between the two countries, the lands on each side of the Border were often the stalking ground of armies, marching north or south for the relentless military confrontations. Both countries were bent on achieving dominance and the Border folk found themselves locked in the bitter wars of attrition for no other reason than they were there, a larder for an army on the move. No match for the hordes of armed men who penetrated their lands, they suffered every atrocity: loss of life, livelihood and home as armies foraged and stole in the surge forward to clash with the enemy.
The wars between England and Scotland endured, off and on, for nigh on three centuries and the commoners soon learned that it was futile to build a home of stone or wood. They were weeks in the making yet could be lost in minutes when fired by the next marauding army unit that appeared over the horizon.
Within the documented history of the 16th century is a reference from 1570 which tells of the trials and tribulations of the Percys of Northumberland following the Rising of the North, an attempt by this most notable family of Northumberland, to re-instate Catholicism as the religion of England. When the Rising failed the Percys sought sanctuary with the Armstrongs of Liddesdale in Scotland. It is recorded that Lady Ann, Countess of Northumberland was taken in by Jock of the ‘Side’, a noted Border Reiver, and was harboured in a hovel ‘not fit for a dog kennel in England’.
Such were the abodes of the common folk. It should be noted that the clay biggings were in close proximity to the fortified pele towers of the richer members of the same family.
Every clan and family had their own lands. The biggins of the clan or family members usually clustered around the pele tower of the Laird or Lord of the same name.
The clay biggins of the common folk of the clan ,scottish side of the Border, and the surnames or families who lived on the English side were always built in close proximity to the pele tower where the leader of the family resided. He might be Laird or Lord and all swore undying allegiance to him. In return he offered protection in times of strife, confrontation and war and a living in the brief intervals of peace.
In the days of the Border Reivers only the holmes which were adajacent to the rivers were suitable for the cultivation of the crops. These provided bread and a limited amount of winter fodder for the animals. The rest of the land, undrained then, was usually given over to the nurture of beasts: cattle, known as ‘kye’ or ‘nolte’, sheep and goats and the car or automobile of the day, the trusty little horse called a hobellar.
Though the tower would always be built adjacent to a stream or ‘burn’, it was usually in a position which was naturally defensive, on a ‘knowe’ or small hill, in boggy ground which impeded easy progress to its walls or away from the flatlands, the holmes, on a cliff or high escarpment. Crops, then, growing for the most-part, away from the tower were hard to defend.
The beasts were free to wander but always watched over and tended.
Household goods and farming implements which were scarce and thus valuable commodities were known as ‘insight’. They were guarded with due diligence; their loss was every bit as catastrophic as the beasts which provided the food.
The people, the Laird or Lord, their beasts and possessions were a magnet to armies on the move or Border Reivers ever-ready to exploit any weakness which resulted in material gain. An army moved on its belly, lived off the land, the Reiver for his own gain and the distress of another.
At the top of each tower was a beacon fire ever-ready to be lit should any enemy be spotted by the watch that patrolled the tower parapets day and night. At the first sign of trouble it would be fired, warning both the clan or family that lived in close proximity to the tower and hopefully folk in the next valley, that mischief was afoot.
At such times the common folk living outside the walls of the tower would gather as much of their ‘insight’ as they could handle whilst driving their beasts within the ‘barnekin’ ( a surrounding wall ) of the tower to some safety. The walls of the barnekin, up to sixteen feet high and three feet thick would hopefully survive the ferocious onslaught, a fifty fifty chance.
Needless to say, the clay biggins were fired in wrath by the intruders. They would be rebuilt within the day when peace once again spread its balm over the valley.
CLAN CARRUTHERS SOCIETY (USA) 